The stream in the sky
It’s bold. It’s ingenious. It’s the engineering marvel that will turn your legs to jelly.
STRIDING ACROSS THE bosky Dee Valley in the top right-hand corner of Wales is an undisputed wonder of the Industrial Revolution. Eighteen tapered stone piers bear the weight of 19 cast iron spans and a trough over 1000 feet long – a giddying 126 feet above the white-water River Dee at its highest point. Every day, 11 million gallons of fresh water flow over it, quenching Cheshire’s incredible thirst.
Opened in November 1805, the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct (say ‘Pont-kersulth-tay’) is still the highest navigable aqueduct on the planet. One of many early plaudits came from Sir Walter Scott, who called it ‘the stream in the sky’. And it astonishes tourists even now, with many walking trepidatiously across it on the queasily narrow towpath. This geography-defying feat of waterway engineering made the name of Thomas Telford, though equal credit goes to his boss William Jessop, senior engineer for the never-completed Ellesmere Canal.
The finished sections and westward feeder spur from Trevor Basin are today known as the Llangollen Canal. The World Heritage Site designation covers its remarkable first 11 miles downstream
from Horseshoe Falls, where water from the River Dee is siphoned into the canal network. You can follow it to Chirk, where a mighty stone duct straddles the Ceiriog Valley, parallel with a railway viaduct.
WALK HERE: Turn to Walk 23 for a 6-mile Pontcysyllte saunter. For routes at Horseshoe Falls and Chirk, head to walk1000miles.co.uk/bonusroutes